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Did you ever put a stamp on an envelope and notice that it often says in the upper right hand corner that the Post Office will not deliver your mail without the proper postage attached?

So what’s all the fuss that our President is trying to create by telling us that Amazon is not paying to have its packages delivered? Just how would they get away with that when everyone knows that the Post Office doesn’t carry our letters, packages and mail around for free? Did you ever try to pop something in the mail without postage????

If you’re lucky the Post Office will send it back to you with a note that says (See above)…if not, you’ll just never see your mail again…nor will anyone else…

The Post Office is not funded by American tax dollars and relies on the sale of postage, products and services to fund its operations. And while it is true that the P.O. is suffering from a large amount of debt that’s only because most of the Postal Service’s financial problems have been created by a government mandate that it pay up front for retiree pension and health care expenses. That’s because an act of Congress says that it has to… (private businesses that have retiree benefit obligations are not required to pay those amounts up front.)… And those P.O. obligations for current and past employees stood at $38 billion at the end of its most recent fiscal year.

And that’s why The Postal Service’s debt is so high. It’s a direct result of the Congressional mandate that it must pay for 10 years to pre-fund the retiree healthcare plan and pension fund…not because Amazon is having it’s mail delivered for free.

And yet our President insists on tweeting:

“I am right about Amazon costing the United States Post Office massive amounts of money for being their Delivery Boy. Amazon should pay these costs (plus) and not have them bourne by the American Taxpayer. Many billions of dollars. P.O. leaders don’t have a clue (or do they?)!”

Does our President have a clue? He should, because…well…like…He is the President!…Of the United States! And he could ask someone who works in the White House or in his Cabinet or in Congress…or Melania even! I bet she knows or could certainly ask someone for him.

But noooooooooo…instead the President has issued an executive order calling for an investigation into the Postal Service’s finances so that we can spend some real taxpayer’s money trying to once again find out who ate the strawberries when we already know who did it…our own President, Captain Queeg!

Just imagine… 2 and a half more years of having to watch the President of the United States…just mailing it in every day…and without a stamp!?

Like this:

Former FBI Director, James Comey, has released a new book in which he accuses President Donald Trump of not being very presidential while also likening him to resembling something more akin to that of a mob boss.

Like this:

President Donald Trump slammed the FBI’s raid on the office and hotel room of his personal lawyer Michael Cohen as a “disgraceful situation” and an “attack on our country.” “It’s a total witch-hunt. ” “It’s an attack on our country in a true sense. It’s an attack on what we all stand for, so when I saw this and when I heard it, I heard it like you did, I said that is really now in a whole new level of unfairness.”

I don’t know what he’s so concerned about or why he is so upset with agents of the law and American law enforcement just doing their job. Aren’t these public servants among the true heroes of our country, as Republicans and conservatives are often so fond of saying, and always picking on Democrats liberals for not saying often enough?

Republicans and Conservatives are also quite fond of telling all Americans about how easy it is to work with law enforcement and officers of the law. It’s really quite simple isn’t it?

Just roll down your window… Say, “yes sir and no sir and thank you sir.”…Obey all instructions politely… Never raise your voice or argue or complain… Show all of your necessary and legal documents…and never, ever, ever show aggression… or run.

After all, if you haven’t done anything wrong…then what is there to be upset or afraid about?

Like this:

That’s life!…According to a study from Harvard University, the Higgs boson particle, also known as the “God particle”, because it helps give mass to all elementary particlesthat have mass, (don’t ask me how) such as electrons and protons, could one day cause the complete destruction of our Universe!

And just how will it do that? Well, a negative energy bubble could cause the collapse of our Universe, (who knew?)…but according to researchers… it is likely that the process of the destruction of said Universe… has already begun! (Say what?)

But don’t worry because all that will need to happen is the collision of the famous (infamous?) Higgs boson particle with aforesaid ball of negative energy…so please let’s just keep it from opening a Facebook account!

Scientists think that this is a rather amusing idea since the Higgs boson particle is also known as the “God Particle”… and the thought that the fundamental particle that gives mass (and life?) to all the matter contained in the Universe is also capable of one day causing the complete destruction of that universe…is, well, rather funny…to scientists…that is…

And you thought that the Universe would just go about its prolonged collapse and disappearance over a few gazillion years or so? Now you know that it is just as likely to all disappear just as fast as it came…in the blink of an eye…and the process say researchers, may have already begun???????

Silly scientists! This is what we regular humans call old age and death. Did not the process begin just as soon as we were big bang smacked and led kicking and screaming into this existence? And might it not now all just end any………………….

Like this:

A new report published by researchers based in the Netherlands using a fleet of boats and aircraft to scan the “Great Pacific Garbage Patch” found an astonishing build-up of plastic waste even more massive than previously reported. They found a total of 80,000 tonnes of buoyant plastic that is now bigger than France, Germany and Spain combined… and it’s growing rapidly!
In addition they found that this “plastic dump” located between Hawaii and California, now contains around 1.8 trillion pieces of plastic, including Microplastics, which are tiny fragments of plastic smaller than 50mm in size which can enter the food chain when swallowed by fish. The pollutants they contain become more concentrated as they work their way up through the food web, all the way to top level predators such as sharks, seals and polar bears.

The Ocean Cleanup project, which carried out the study, says eight million tonnes of plastics enter the oceans every year, much of which has accumulated in five giant garbage patches around the planet.

And in another recent study 259 water bottles from 11 brands sold across nine countries, including the United States, were tested and found that 93% contained micro-plastic contamination. The research, found an average of 10.4 plastic particles per liter of water, which is twice the amount of contamination found in tap water. So…if you are drinking water that you are buying in plastic bottles because you believe it is safer or purer than your tap water from the faucet in your home…you’re wrong!

Unless of course, you are trying to get more vitamin-P into your diet!

But it gets worse! (How is that possible?) because researchers who tested tap water from around the world found that more than 80% of the samples contained microscopic-sized plastic fibers and the contamination is particularly high in the United States, where 94% of faucet water is affected, including in samples from the U.S. Capitol and the headquarters of the Environmental Protection Agency…of all places!

So now you can go back to your plastic bottles (that didn’t take long) I guess because in the USA it’s 94 tap-93 bottle and this is one score where more is not better…unless you live in India and/or Lebanon where the highest rates of tap water contamination were found.

And how did we get into this plastic mess in the first place? It was cheaper of course than glass which was so passe anyway and heavier to carry and didn’t make that fun crinkly sound when you were all finished and glass had to always be saved and recycled…which by the way we do now with plastics.

Ah well, on the bright side (?) in the not so distant future we won’t have to use up more of the Earth’s space by burying one another after we have passed. We can just dump our dearly departed and mostly plastic loved ones into the trash bin…and have them recycled too!

And Perhaps in a thousands or two more years aliens will fly by our lonely orb and wonder how a plastic planet with a non-plastic moon found its way into the middle of our solar system…a cheap trinket in an otherwise priceless universe?

Like this:

So I made my usual trip to the pharmacy to purchase my allotment of Claritin-D which is regulated by the Federal government because it contains Pseudophedrine, a substance that can be used to make Crystal-Meth, and when I produced my driver’s license (necessary according to Federal law) and it was scanned into the pharmacy’s computer, the computer responded with a funny noise and…

No Pseudo for me!

Now I don’t make Crystal-Meth, and I don’t want to…but I do have allergies and Claritin-D helps a lot but the machine hath spoken… said the clerk, and I was denied my medication. She didn’t know why the machine made a funny noise and when she called over the pharmacist he didn’t know either. And don’t look at me because I didn’t have a clue, except for the fact that my wife might have taken one or two of my pills during the course of the past week and so I may have used my allotment without knowing it…but the computer apparently did!

And since the machine made the noise and refused to continue with the transaction there was nothing any of us could do. No sale! No how! No way! I was left to my sneezes and itchy nose and hopes for another day…

Once upon a time I was able to receive my allergy medication from a doctor who would prescribe it for me and the pharmacist would fill the prescription and that was that. Then the medication was approved for over the counter sales and not only did it become more expensive but also was subject to more government regulation and hence the day was soon to come when not a doctor, nor a law enforcement officer, but rather a common clerk would have the authority to tell me:

No Pseudo for you!

Now what am I to do? Turn to Heroine? That won’t help with my allergies! Hit the black market? Turn to a life of crime? Or perhaps I will have to just wait until the machine says that it is OK for me to have some more…after all I am not a criminal and I am not in the Crystal-Meth making business nor do I need any more than the amount necessary to quench my allergy symptoms…

So I ask you: Why can’t we do this with Opioids?

Just take them out of the hands of the doctors who always seem to prescribe more than they should because they empathize so strongly with the pain and suffering of their patients. Take them out of the hands of the Pharmaceutical companies who can’t seem to help wanting to make as much money as they possibly can by producing more pills than is humanly possible for humans to consume responsibly, and also take them out of the hands of the pharmacists who fill prescriptions simply because… they are prescribed.

Let’s put opioids in the hands of the computers and the common store clerk who has no authority to do what he or she can’t do except say, No Oxy for you! …When the machine goes whir or beep or whatever. Then the opioid user has a choice: Wait until they can purchase more to manage their pain, as medically prescribed by federal law, or…turn to a life of crime. In which case they would then be responsible for their own addiction (which we don’t seem to hold them responsible for now…like the hundreds of thousands of addicts we stow away in our prisons)

We’ve been at war with drugs in America for 60 years! Law enforcement has not worked…but they’re still on the job. Walls have not worked…but we still want to build more. Drug companies have not helped.. and they still keep churning out more and more pills. Doctors have not helped….and they still keep on writing those prescriptions. So Maybe simple computers and work-a-day clerks can get the job done?

Like this:

There is a commercial being run on television here in the New York metropolitan area featuring a young mother explaining to the camera that now that she has received her 2,000 dollar increase in her pay check and a $1,000 bonus from the company she works for… as direct results of the recent Republican tax reform, life in America is so much easier because she and her family can now afford to buy so many more of the things that they need.

Has this happened to you? Are you earning 3,000 dollars more than you were 3 months ago? The commercial says that this is the average increase in middle class workers pay throughout the country.

I have received about 32 dollars more in my monthly pay or around 380 dollars over the course of this coming year…and of course since I have not filled out my 2018 tax return, because that will not be due until another year from now, I have no way of knowing whether I will receive more in tax savings or will have to pay it all back (and more?) because of the deductions I am going to lose because of the new tax plan.

So are we all getting richer or am I the only unlucky tax payer in America?